Malé is now the besieged capital of the submerged Maldives, built up precariously on the ruins of oil tanks and docking derricks, apartment blocks and concrete breakwaters.
(fiction)
Tag: Fiction
Her keys might have opened the church, and she the one to serve sponge fingers like death.
(The Loop)
She spends her days tending the grapes, and she runs a little gift shop in the village . . . Now that she’s simplified her relationships with people, she seems even healthier, even more herself.
(fiction)
It was deemed very unfeminine to play the bridegroom . . . Girls would tease you and provoke you like a real bridegroom and laugh at your expense.
(fiction)
With boys comes a lot of stress. You worry about how you can buy him his own place, or you worry about who he’ll bring into your house.
(fiction)
A cacophony of voices inquiring, wanting to disentangle the mysteries of the tattoos like hieroglyphs, pictograms.
(fiction)
content warning: sexual assault
My mouth is full of blood, like a poppy growing in my mouth, it tastes like the pennies I used to throw in wishing wells.
(fiction)
Her mother continued to hand her things: that lost dollar, a Chinese cookie fortune, one missing pearl earring.
(fiction)
There is no such thing as old water, but when I answered, “I’m as old as water,” my son’s eyes grew wide. He says that because water cycles, it’s all super old. (fiction)
it’s still spring in Rome, a perennial incitement to live. We meet in Piazza Cavour, me with my selfish FFP3 mask, Luisa with her altruistic blue cloth one.
(fiction)
California has weathered him with sun and heat. Michigan has begun to change me, too. We’re two birds . . . both singing variations of the same song.
(fiction)
The rose bushes lining the sidewalk leading to the front steps appeared like sentinels at the Mughal court, waiting for a decry from the Indian parent at the parapet.
(fiction)
I look to the nearby hill, past her and the highway, and watch it blacken. Its lines are clean and honest.
(fiction)
content warning: discussion about suicidal events and ideation.
(fiction)
I wanted to shout, but my tongue felt like the army slept on it. I wish I had a bittersweet Lick-M-Aid.
(fiction)
I’ve never liked American reality TV because there’s so much hyperbole, yelling and arguing that reminds me of my childhood, that cramped home, the screaming matches, the constant fighting over money.
(fiction)
Moving beaters hacked and coughed like emphysema patients.
(fiction)
The space between the woman and the art flattened until she felt she was the art.
(fiction)
What does it mean when most of your countrymen live in Moscow or Los Angeles?
(fiction)
“The White Envelope (1975)” by Catherine Cusset, translated from the French by Armine Kotin Mortimer
All night long, Elena tossed and turned on her thin mattress and listened to . . . the coughs, the laughs, the sobs, and the whispers of all these poor people who had the same hopes as they did.
(fiction)
So they invoked God to bless their spreadsheet. Some said God said those words were His . . . And others said God never really said that.
(fiction)
You notice she doesn’t have her usual mom smell; she smells like orange trees and flower fields.
(fiction)
He went into the kitchen to look for the car keys, found them on the hook where she usually hung them, and put them in his pocket.
(fiction)
The men frequently give aliases; as simple as John Smith or as attention-seeking as Carlos Danger. She guesses that they believe her name to be an alias too.
(fiction)
He wore a pair of faded bib overalls over a black NASCAR tee shirt, a red “Make America Great Again” hat, and held in one hand the electrician-taped handle of a bulging duffel bag and in the other, a leash attached to the pale pink, rhinestone studded collar of a doleful looking Harlequin Great Dane.
(fiction)
I turn around and gain elevation so I won’t be tempted. It’s her turn to hunt.
(fiction)
Mary Ann seemed more at ease, and eventually turned to Greta to ask, “Does your son obey you?”
Greta smiled, “No. Does anyone’s?”
(fiction)
Professional Skills: Steel-driving, of course
(fiction)
“The Last Moments of a Brave Mouse” by Ahmed Shaker, translated from the Arabic by Essam M. A-Jassim
The mouse saw the Ghost of Death approach him as the humans struck him with the shoe, stick, broom, and a series of quick kicks.
(fiction)
I want something in return for telling you my story. I want you to remember me. I want you to say that I was a capable man.
(fiction)
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